(This review is forthcoming as `Skorupski on agent-neutrality', Utilitas, 7 (1995), pp. 315-17. Preprinted here by permission.)ccording to John Skorupski, a reason for action is agent-neutral if it
can be expressed by means of an agent-neutral reason-predicate.[1] He
defines a predicate P to be a reason-predicate if

(1) (x)(y)(Py -> there is a reason for x to do y),

where x ranges over agents and y ranges over acts open to x. He defines
a reason-predicate to be agent-neutral if it contains no free occurrence
of the agent-variable x.

Consider this reason for doing an act: that the act gives an expected
benefit to whoever does it. This reason can be expressed by the reason-
predicate `gives an expected benefit to an agent who does y' in

(2) (x)(y)(y gives an expected benefit to an agent who does y ->
there is a reason for x to do y).

This predicate contains no free occurrence of x, so it is agent-neutral
according to Skorupski's definition. Yet it expresses an egoistic reason
for action, and egoistic reasons should definitely not be counted as
agent-neutral. Skorupski's definition is too broad, then.

Thomas Nagel defines agent-neutrality differently.[2] He does not deal
directly with reasons to do an act, but with reasons to promote an
event, and he takes events to include acts. He defines a predicate P to
be a reason-predicate if

(3) (x)(y)(Py -> there is a reason for x to promote y),

where x ranges over agents and y ranges over events. He defines a
reason-predicate P to be agent-neutral if it contains no free occurrence
of the variable x; otherwise he defines it to be agent-relative.
Consider this reason for promoting an act: that the act gives an
expected benefit to whoever does it. The statement that embeds this
reason,

(4) (x)(y)(y gives an expected benefit to an agent who does y ->
there is a reason for x to promote y),

says that if an act gives an expected benefit to whoever does it, then
anyone has a reason to promote this act, not merely a person who can
gain an expected benefit for herself by actually doing it. As a reason
to promote rather than a reason to do, then, this is not an egoistic
reason. Nagel would define it as agent-neutral, and would be right to do
so.

Skorupski compares a pair of principles like these: that one ought to
keep promises, and that one ought to maximize the keeping of
promises.[3] Nagel would formulate them, respectively:

(5) (x)(y)(y is the keeping of a promise by x ->
x has a reason to promote y)

(6) (x)(y)(y is the keeping of a promise ->
x has a reason to promote y).

(When y is an act of x's, x promotes y by doing y.) On Nagel's
definition, these express respectively an agent-relative and an agent-
neutral reason. Most authors have accepted this classification. They
have agreed that the principle that one ought to keep promises is agent-
relative. I followed the crowd.[4] But Skorupski disagrees with me. He
would formulate this principle:

(7) (x)(y)(y is the keeping of a promise -> x has a reason to do y).

Because the reason-predicate `is the keeping of a promise' contains no
free occurrence of x, Skorupski claims the principle is agent-neutral.
Of a parallel principle,[5] he says it `lacks nothing in impartiality'.
But this principle certainly lacks something in agent-neutrality. When
someone might or might not keep a promise, it gives a reason only to one
person, the person whose promise it is: it gives her a reason not to
break her promise. On the other hand, the principle that one ought to
maximize the keeping of promises gives a reason to everyone; it gives us
all a reason to try and make sure this promise is kept. Nagel's
formulation picks out this difference accurately. This is another case
where Skorupski counts as agent-neutral a reason that ought not be
counted as agent-neutral.

Nagel has good reason to deal with reasons to promote, rather than
reasons to do.[6] Intuitively, an agent-neutral reason is one that
applies to any agent, rather than just to one agent or a restricted
group. Provided P contains no free occurrence of x, Nagel's statement
(3) can be written:

(8) (y)(Py -> (x)(there is a reason for x to promote y)),

which makes it clear that an agent-neutral reason applies to anyone.
Skorupski's statement (1) cannot be transformed in the same way. Whereas
anyone can have a reason to promote a particular event (or so Nagel
assumes), only some people can have a reason to do a particular act:
those who can do it. Therefore, Skorupski correctly restricts the range
of the quantifier (y) in (1) to acts that are open to x. Formally, this
means that (1) should be written:

(9) (x)(y)(y is open to x & Py -> there is a reason for x to do y).

If P contains no free occurrence of x, this can only be transformed to:
(10) (y)(Py -> (x)(y is open to x -> there is a reason for x to do y)).
So even when P contains no free occurrence of x, the reason it expresses
applies only to people to whom the act is open. It is not truly agent-
neutral, then. Consequently, reasons to do are inherently unsatisfactory
bearers for the notion of agent-neutrality.

This will not be a significant limitation if acts are open to many
people. Are they? It depends how they are individuated. If acts are
individuated taking into account the identity of the agent ~ so my
singing is a different act from your singing ~ only one person can do a
particular act. Reasons to do acts individuated this way cannot be truly
agent-neutral, therefore. But the more broadly individuated act of,
just, singing is open to many people. So it may seem that, if acts are
individuated without taking into account the identity of the agent,
reasons to do them might be genuinely agent-neutral if they satisfy
Skorupski's definition. But the following example shows that
individuating acts broadly in this way leads to a different problem.

Suppose there is one chocolate on the table. Any one of us can eat it;
the act of eating the chocolate is open to us all. Suppose each of us
has a reason to do this act, and moreover it is the same reason: that
eating the chocolate gives an expected benefit to whoever does it. (This
is the egoistic reason expressed in (2).) Skorupski would count this as
an agent-neutral reason because it applies to all of us who can do the
act. But although it is a reason for each of us to do the same act,
broadly individuated, of eating the chocolate, it does not give us a
shared aim. It gives us conflicting aims. The intuitive notion of an
agent-neutral reason requires us to share an aim,[7] but if acts are
individuated without taking into account the identity of the agent, the
same reason to do the same act can include many different aims. Broad
individuation is therefore not an acceptable way to escape the
limitations of (10).

However acts are individuated, agent-neutrality cannot be
satisfactorily defined in terms of reasons to do an act. Skorupski's
definition includes too much. Nagel's definition in terms of reasons to
promote is more successful.

3. Actually, he compares the principle that one ought not to tell lies
with the principle that one ought to minimize the telling of lies.

4. John Broome, Weighing Goods, Blackwell, 1991, p. 5.

5. That one ought not to tell lies.

6. In `Agent-relativity and the doing-happening distinction',
Philosophical Studies, 63 (1991), pp. 167~85, David McNaughton and Piers
Rawling formulate moral rules as injunctions to ensure the truth of a
proposition, rather than as injunctions to act. This has the same
effect.